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1 Williams, Sir Frederic Calland
SUBJECT AREA: Electronics and information technology[br]b. 26 June 1911 Stockport, Cheshire, Englandd. 11 August 1977 Prestbury, Cheshire, England[br]English electrical engineer who invented the Williams storage cathode ray tube, which was extensively used worldwide as a data memory in the first digital computers.[br]Following education at Stockport Grammar School, Williams entered Manchester University in 1929, gaining his BSc in 1932 and MSc in 1933. After a short time as a college apprentice with Metropolitan Vickers, he went to Magdalen College, Oxford, to study for a DPhil, which he was awarded in 1936. He returned to Manchester University that year as an assistant lecturer, gaining his DSc in 1939. Following the outbreak of the Second World War he worked for the Scientific Civil Service, initially at the Bawdsey Research Station and then at the Telecommunications Research Establishment at Malvern, Worcestershire. There he was involved in research on non-incandescent amplifiers and diode rectifiers and the development of the first practical radar system capable of identifying friendly aircraft. Later in the war, he devised an automatic radar system suitable for use by fighter aircraft.After the war he resumed his academic career at Manchester, becoming Professor of Electrical Engineering and Director of the University Electrotechnical Laboratory in 1946. In the same year he succeeded in developing a data-memory device based on the cathode ray tube, in which the information was stored and read by electron-beam scanning of a charge-retaining target. The Williams storage tube, as it became known, not only found obvious later use as a means of storing single-frame, still television images but proved to be a vital component of the pioneering Manchester University MkI digital computer. Because it enabled both data and program instructions to be stored in the computer, it was soon used worldwide in the development of the early stored-program computers.[br]Principal Honours and DistinctionsKnighted 1976. OBE 1945. CBE 1961. FRS 1950. Hon. DSc Durham 1964, Sussex 1971, Wales 1971. First Royal Society of Arts Benjamin Franklin Medal 1957. City of Philadelphia John Scott Award 1960. Royal Society Hughes Medal 1963. Institution of Electrical Engineers Faraday Medal 1972. Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers Pioneer Award 1973.BibliographyWilliams contributed papers to many scientific journals, including Proceedings of the Royal Society, Proceedings of the Cambridge Philosophical Society, Journal of the Institution of Electrical Engineers, Proceedings of the Institution of Mechanical Engineers, Wireless Engineer, Post Office Electrical Engineers' Journal. Note especially: 1948, with J.Kilburn, "Electronic digital computers", Nature 162:487; 1949, with J.Kilburn, "A storage system for use with binary digital computing machines", Proceedings of the Institution of Electrical Engineers 96:81; 1975, "Early computers at Manchester University", Radio \& Electronic Engineer 45:327. Williams also collaborated in the writing of vols 19 and 20 of the MIT RadiationLaboratory Series.Further ReadingB.Randell, 1973, The Origins of Digital Computers, Berlin: Springer-Verlag. M.R.Williams, 1985, A History of Computing Technology, London: Prentice-Hall. See also: Stibitz, George R.; Strachey, Christopher.KFBiographical history of technology > Williams, Sir Frederic Calland
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2 Electronics and information technology
See also: INDEX BY SUBJECT AREA[br]Byron, Ada AugustaNapier, JohnRiche, Gaspard-Clair-François-MarieSchickhard, WilhelmBiographical history of technology > Electronics and information technology
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3 Forrester, Jay Wright
SUBJECT AREA: Electronics and information technology[br]b. 14 July 1918 Anselmo, Nebraska, USA[br]American electrical engineer and management expert who invented the magnetic-core random access memory used in most early digital computers.[br]Born on a cattle ranch, Forrester obtained a BSc in electrical engineering at the University of Nebraska in 1939 and his MSc at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) in Cambridge, Massachusetts, where he remained to teach and carry out research. Becoming interested in computing, he established the Digital Computer Laboratory at MIT in 1945 and became involved in the construction of Whirlwind I, an early general-purpose computer completed in March 1951 and used for flight-simulation by the US Army Air Force. Finding the linear memories then available for storing data a major limiting factor in the speed at which computers were able to operate, he developed a three-dimensional store based on the binary switching of the state of small magnetic cores that could be addressed and switched by a matrix of wires carrying pulses of current. The machine used parallel synchronous fixed-point computing, with fifteen binary digits and a plus sign, i.e. 16 bits in all, and contained 5,000 vacuum tubes, eleven semiconductors and a 2 MHz clock for the arithmetic logic unit. It occupied a two-storey building and consumed 150kW of electricity. From his experience with the development and use of computers, he came to realize their great potential for the simulation and modelling of real situations and hence for the solution of a variety of management problems, using data communications and the technique now known as interactive graphics. His later career was therefore in this field, first at the MIT Lincoln Laboratory in Lexington, Massachusetts (1951) and subsequently (from 1956) as Professor at the Sloan School of Management at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.[br]Principal Honours and DistinctionsNational Academy of Engineering 1967. George Washington University Inventor of the Year 1968. Danish Academy of Science Valdemar Poulsen Gold Medal 1969. Systems, Man and Cybernetics Society Award for Outstanding Accomplishments 1972. Computer Society Pioneer Award 1972. Institution of Electrical Engineers Medal of Honour 1972. National Inventors Hall of Fame 1979. Magnetics Society Information Storage Award 1988. Honorary DEng Nebraska 1954, Newark College of Engineering 1971, Notre Dame University 1974. Honorary DSc Boston 1969, Union College 1973. Honorary DPolSci Mannheim University, Germany. Honorary DHumLett, State University of New York 1988.Bibliography1951, "Data storage in three dimensions using magnetic cores", Journal of Applied Physics 20: 44 (his first description of the core store).Publications on management include: 1961, Industrial Dynamics, Cambridge, Mass.: MIT Press; 1968, Principles of Systems, 1971, Urban Dynamics, 1980, with A.A.Legasto \& J.M.Lyneis, System Dynamics, North Holland. 1975, Collected Papers, Cambridge, Mass.: MIT.Further ReadingK.C.Redmond \& T.M.Smith, Project Whirlwind, the History of a Pioneer Computer (provides details of the Whirlwind computer).H.H.Goldstine, 1993, The Computer from Pascal to von Neumann, Princeton University Press (for more general background to the development of computers).Serrell et al., 1962, "Evolution of computing machines", Proceedings of the Institute ofRadio Engineers 1,047.M.R.Williams, 1975, History of Computing Technology, London: Prentice-Hall.See also: Burks, Arthur Walter; Goldstine, Herman H.; Wilkes, Maurice Vincent; Williams, Sir Frederic CallandKF -
4 Strachey, Christopher
SUBJECT AREA: Electronics and information technology[br]b. 16 November 1916 Englandd. 18 May 1975 Oxford, England[br]English physicist and computer engineer who proposed time-sharing as a more efficient means of using a mainframe computer.[br]After education at Gresham's School, London, Strachey went to King's College, Cambridge, where he completed an MA. In 1937 he took up a post as a physicist at the Standard Telephone and Cable Company, then during the Second World War he was involved in radar research. In 1944 he became an assistant master at St Edmunds School, Canterbury, moving to Harrow School in 1948. Another change of career in 1951 saw him working as a Technical Officer with the National Research and Development Corporation, where he was involved in computer software and hardware design. From 1958 until 1962 he was an independent consultant in computer design, and during this time (1959) he realized that as mainframe computers were by then much faster than their human operators, their efficiency could be significantly increased by "time-sharing" the tasks of several operators in rapid succession. Strachey made many contributions to computer technology, being variously involved in the design of the Manchester University MkI, Elliot and Ferranti Pegasus computers. In 1962 he joined Cambridge University Mathematics Laboratory as a senior research fellow at Churchill College and helped to develop the programming language CPL. After a brief period as Visiting Lecturer at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, he returned to the UK in 1966 as Reader in Computation and Fellow of Wolfeon College, Oxford, to establish a programming research group. He remained there until his death.[br]Principal Honours and DistinctionsDistinguished Fellow of the British Computer Society 1972.Bibliography1961, with M.R.Wilkes, "Some proposals for improving the efficiency of Algol 60", Communications of the ACM 4:488.1966, "Systems analysis and programming", Scientific American 25:112. 1976, with R.E.Milne, A Theory of Programming Language Semantics.Further ReadingJ.Alton, 1980, Catalogue of the Papers of C. Strachey 1916–1975.M.Campbell-Kelly, 1985, "Christopher Strachey 1916–1975. A biographical note", Annals of the History of Computing 7:19.M.R.Williams, 1985, A History of Computing Technology, London: Prentice-Hall.KF
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Frederic Calland Williams — Sir Frederic Calland Williams CBE FRS (26 juin 1911 à Stockport 11 août 1977 à Manchester), surnommé Freddie Williams, est un ingénieur anglais. Il étudie à l université Victoria de Manchester, et reçoit le titre de docteur en … Wikipédia en Français
Frederic Calland Williams — Sir Frederic Calland Williams (* 26. Juni 1911 in Stockport; † 11. August 1977 in Manchester) war ein englischer Ingenieur. Er besuchte die University of Manchester und erlangte 1936 seinen Doktor an der University of Oxford. Im Zweiten Weltkrieg … Deutsch Wikipedia
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Frederic Williams — Sir Frederic Calland Williams (* 26. Juni 1911 in Stockport; † 11. August 1977 in Manchester) war ein englischer Ingenieur. Er besuchte die University of Manchester und erlangte 1936 seinen Doktor an der University of Oxford. Im Zweiten Weltkrieg … Deutsch Wikipedia
Frederik Calland Williams — Sir Frederic Calland Williams (* 26. Juni 1911 in Stockport; † 11. August 1977 in Manchester) war ein englischer Ingenieur. Er besuchte die University of Manchester und erlangte 1936 seinen Doktor an der University of Oxford. Im Zweiten Weltkrieg … Deutsch Wikipedia
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